Baking

Shortening

Fats and oils are essential ingredients in nearly all bakery products. Shortenings have a tenderizing effect in the finished product and often aid in the manipulation of doughs. In addition to modifying the mouth feel or texture, they often add flavour of their own and tend to round off harsh notes in some of the spice flavours.

The common fats used in bakery products are lard, beef fats, and hydrogenated vegetable oils. Butter is used in some premium and specialty products as a texturizer and to add flavour, but its high cost precludes extensive use. Cottonseed oil and soybean oil are the most common processed vegetable oils used. Corn, peanut, and coconut oils are used to a limited extent; fats occurring in other ingredients, such as egg yolks, chocolate, and nut butters, can have a shortening effect if the ingredients are present in sufficient quantity.

Breads and rolls often contain only 1 or 2 percent shortening; cakes will have 10 to 20 percent; Danish pastries prepared according to the authentic formula may have about 30 percent; pie crusts may contain even more. High usage levels require those shortenings that melt above room temperature; butter and liquid shortenings, with their lower melting point, tend to leak from the product.

Commercial shortenings may include antioxidants, to retard rancidity, and emulsifiers, to improve the shortening effect. Colours and flavours simulating butter may also be added. Margarines, emulsions of fat, water, milk solids, and salt, are popular bakery ingredients.

Fats of any kind have a destructive effect on meringues and other protein-based foams; small traces of oil left on the mixing utensils can deflate an angel food cake to unacceptably high density.

Liquids

Water is the liquid most commonly added to doughs. Milk is usually added to commercial preparations in dried form, and any moisture added in the form of eggs and butter is usually minimal. Water is not merely a diluent or inert constituent; it affects every aspect of the finished product, and careful adjustment of the amount of liquid is essential to make the dough or batter adaptable to the processing method. If dough is too wet, it will stick to equipment and have poor response to shaping and transfer operations; if too dry, it will not shape or leaven properly.

Water hydrates gluten, permitting it to aggregate in the form of a spongy cellular network, the structural basis of most bakery products. It provides a medium in which yeast can metabolize sugars to form carbon dioxide and flavouring components and allows diffusion of nutrients and metabolites throughout the mass. Water is an indispensable component of the baking-powder reaction, and it allows starch to gelatinize during baking and prevents interior browning of bakery products.

Water impurities affect dough properties. Water preferred for baking is usually of medium hardness (50 to 100 parts per million) with a neutral pH (degree of acidity), or slightly acid (low pH). Water that is too soft can result in sticky doughs, while very hard water may retard dough expansion by toughening the gluten (calcium ions, particularly, promote cross-linking of gluten protein molecules). Water sufficiently alkaline to raise the dough pH may have a deleterious effect on fermentation and on flour enzymes. Although strongly flavoured contaminants may affect the acceptability of the finished product, chlorides and fluorides at concentrations usually found in water supplies have little influence on bread doughs.

Eggs

The differences between yolks and whites must be recognized in considering the effect of eggs on bakery products. Yolks contain about 50 percent solids, of which 60 percent or more is strongly emulsified fat, and are used in bakery foods for their effect on colour, flavour, and texture. Egg whites, containing only about 12 percent solids, primarily protein, and no fat, are important primarily for their texturizing function and give foams of low density and good stability when beaten. When present in substantial amounts, they tend to promote small, uniform cell size and relatively large volume. Meringues and angel food cakes are dependent on egg white foams for their basic structure. Although fats and oils greatly diminish its foaming power, the white still contributes to the structure of layer cakes and similar confections containing substantial amounts of both shortening and egg products.

Egg products are available to bakers in frozen or dried form. Few commercial bakers break fresh eggs for ingredients, because of labour costs, unstable market conditions, and sanitary considerations. Many bakers use dried egg products because of their greater convenience and superior storage stability over frozen eggs. Processed and stored correctly, dried egg products are the functional equivalent of the fresh material, although flavour of the baked goods may be affected adversely at very high usage levels.

Sweeteners

Normal wheat flour contains about 1 percent sugars. Most are fermentable compounds, such as sucrose, maltose, glucose, and fructose. Additional maltose is formed during fermentation by the action of amyloytic enzymes (from malt and flour) on the starch. Glucose and sucrose are the sugars most frequently added to doughs and batters. The action of yeast rapidly converts the sucrose to fructose and glucose (i.e., invert sugar). Invert sugar can also be added.

Sweetening power is an important property of added sugars, but sugars also provide fermentables for yeast activity. Crust colour development is related to the amount of reducing sugars present, and a dough in which the sugars have been thoroughly depleted by yeast will produce a pale crust.

Doughs with high concentrations of dissolved substances retard fermentation because of the effect on yeast of the high osmotic pressure (low water activity) of the aqueous phase. Sugars constitute the bulk of dissolved materials in most doughs. For this reason, sweet yeast-leavened goods develop gas and expand more slowly than bread doughs.